Question regarding tenses.

[Lumen_et_umbra]

Why, in the following sentence, is the pluperfect tense used?<br /><br />Cvm Gaivm diligeremus, tamen evm non iuvare potueramus.<br />Although we loved Gaius, nevertheless we had not been able to help him.<br /><br /><br />Why is it not phrased thus?<br /><br />Cvm Gaivm diligeremvs, tamen evm non iuvare poteramvs.<br />Although we loved Gaius, nevertheless we were not able to help him.<br /><br />And - if it can be phrased as it is the second sentence - what are the nuances of meaning between the two?<br /><br /><br /><br />Also, how would one phrase the following sentence?<br /><br />They asked what he had done before he did the other thing.<br />Rogant qvod fecissent anteqvam altervm fecit. ??<br />

[bingley]

[quote author=Lumen_et_umbra link=board=3;threadid=489;start=0#4175 date=1061095820]<br />Why, in the following sentence, is the pluperfect tense used?<br /><br />Cvm Gaivm diligeremus, tamen evm non iuvare potueramus.<br />Although we loved Gaius, nevertheless we had not been able to help him.<br /><br /><br />Why is it not phrased thus?<br /><br />Cvm Gaivm diligeremvs, tamen evm non iuvare poteramvs.<br />Although we loved Gaius, nevertheless we were not able to help him.<br /><br />And - if it can be phrased as it is the second sentence - what are the nuances of meaning between the two?<br /><br />[/quote]<br /><br />Why is the pluperfect used? That would depend on the context. Could you give us more to work with please.<br />

[Lumen_et_umbra]

That's all she wrote... (or rather that is all he, Wheelock, wrote.)<br /><br />He didn't expatiate on the matter, save to say that such is how one would write such a sentence in Latin. This angers me because I want to learn by my own inference; I want to learn the basics and thus understanding all the more complicated matters, which are predicated upon those basics, that I might not have to learn by rote!<br /><br />Sorry to not have more information. As I said earlier, "That's all she wrote."

[bingley]

What is the unit/lesson about? That might give a clue. I've never looked at Wheelock so I don't know. Does he generally take his examples from original sources or does he make them up himself?<br /><br />Presumably the not-being-able-to-help occurred before something else, but without a context we'll never know what.

[Maria]

What Wheelock edition do you have? In the 6th, the sentence reads:<br /><br />Cum Gaium diligeremus, non poteramus eum iuvare. he calls it "cum adversative." This seems to make more sense.

[Lumen_et_umbra]

That is what I thought. However, the way he discusses the topic leads one to presume that that is the rule form forming such a sentence, not a variation on a rule.

[Milito]

Has he got to a sequence of tenses at all yet? In both Cicero and Horace, I've been tripping over a number of instances where pluperfect is used simply to indicate that something has happened prior to something else that happened in the past, but where an English-equivalent pluperfect wouldn't be used. I begin to conclude that this is another case of grammar not mapping nicely between the two languages.

[Lumen_et_umbra]

I have finished the 6th edition of Wheelock's Latin; I am just skipping around, reviewing certain topics, which I might have forgotten. <br /><br />It struck me as odd that Wheelock would have used an example that employed the pluperfect, not because it was a rule in Latin to do so, but because the use of the pluperfect tense indicated tacitly that it was done before another action in the past; doing this creates misunderstandings for the reader.